We Should All Be Feminists

In a work of fiction, a foil is a character whose traits contrast with the main character’s traits and therefore allow us to see the main character more sharply. While this essay is a work of non-fiction, Adichie uses several characters from her own life as foils, to illustrate how their opposing views have sharpened her own. In this way, the use of foils can be as much an argumentative strategy as a literary one.

One significant foil in her essay is her childhood friend Okoloma. While Adichie describes Okoloma as a dear and valued friend—whose later death in a plane crash she still mourns—he also represents one of her formative encounters with sexism. By calling her a feminist in a disparaging tone of voice, he awakens Adichie to two realities: the existence of feminism and the existence of sexism. Her encounter with Okoloma both opens and closes the essay, highlighting its importance to Adichie.

Irony is when words express the opposite of what they mean. It’s a literary device but can also be a rhetorical one. Since its effect is often humorous, it can soften and humanize a serious argument.

Adichie sometimes uses ironic exaggeration in this essay, as when she refers to herself as “a Happy African Feminist Who Does Not Hate Men and Who Likes to Wear Lip Gloss and High Heels for Herself and Not For Men” (10). This is obviously not an official title although it has the appearance of one; rather, as Adichie herself writes, it’s a “tongue-in-cheek” (11) way to illustrate how loaded the word feminist can be (11).

At other times, Adichie uses ironic understatement as a device: that is, she downplays a serious situation for comic effect. For example, in describing Nigerian acquaintances who challenge her feminism, she writes, “Nigerians, as you might know, are very quick to give unsolicited advice” (9). The italicizing of the word advice is ironic, intending to suggest something more aggressive than advice. The line highlights a recurrent and frustrating situation; at the same time, it conveys Adichie’s affection for her fellow Nigerians.

A common argumentative technique is to summarize the arguments of your opponent to refute these arguments. Adichie does so in this essay by writing about the arguments against feminism that she has encountered. Some of these arguments are easily dismissed. Regarding the anthropological argument, for example—the argument that male dominance and female subservience are traits found in nature—Adichie writes simply, “We are not apes. Apes live in trees and eat earthworms. We do not” (43). That is, she uses humor to puncture an argument she perceives as specious and silly.

Adichie gives more substantive time to other arguments, such as the one that feminism goes against African culture. In dismantling this argument, she examines the meaning of the word culture and suggests that its importance has less to do with rules than with flexibility. She writes that “[c]ulture does not make people. People make culture” and points out that many cultural traditions have evolved and changed over the years (46). Another argument that Adichie examines at length is that feminism is too narrow a focus and that feminists should instead focus on human rights. Adichie uses this argument to analyze how different forms of oppression exist in the world and how one oppressed group can be blind to the oppressions of another group. She declares that gender discrimination is as legitimate a category of oppression as racism or class discrimination and that to state otherwise is to deny her the reality of her own experiences.